Reliever Rodriguez predicts his return to the majors

Rodriguez the soothsayer

Fernando Rodriguez didn’t know the phone call was coming, but he could feel it.

“It’s kind of weird, but I had kind of had a premonition,” said Rodriguez, who got the call-up to the Astros via Class AAA manager Tony DeFrancesco while shopping for a birthday gift for his wife. “I don’t want to sound cocky, but it’s one of those things.”

The part-time oracle and full-time righthanded reliever reported to the Astros on Wednesday, smiling while he told the story. With a day of travel to the West Coast looming, he had alerted the Class AAA Oklahoma City staff that he might be driving to the airport on his own and DeFrancesco said he was just checking in on the plans until he gave up on his hoax.

“Well, we’ve had a change of plans. You’re going to St. Louis,” Rodriguez recalls DeFrancesco saying.

“It was a shock. My legs started getting Jello-ey and stuff.”

Rodriguez’s wasn’t The Call with the capital letters — he had pitched two-thirds of an inning for the Angels in 2009 — but it’s a new start for the El Paso native, whom the Astros signed to a free agent deal this offseason.

He earned this one with 29 strikeouts in 21 innings at Class AAA, which accompanied a 1.29 ERA, and he was summoned to replace Fernando Abad, demoted to fix his control problems.

While the Astros lost their high-leverage-situational lefty in Abad, Brad Mills wasn’t ready to proclaim Sergio Escalona a “big-innngs guy” and will take a wait-and-see approach with Rodriguez’s situations too.

“We haven’t seen him since spring training, and the reports were very good from Oklahoma City that he was throwing the ball very well and getting everything over for strikes,” Mills said of Rodriguez. “We’ll just kind of see how it goes and try to get him into some games.”

All about the situation

There is little that will get a fun (and fruitless) baseball debate going than the use of the sacrifice bunt by position players, such as Angel Sanchez’s bunt in a fun (and fruitless) eighth inning of Tuesday’s loss.

The Astros haven’t gone overly crazy with sacrificing an out to advance the baserunner or runners this year as their seven sacrifices by position players entering Wednesday were right in line with the league average of 7.8.

Of the seven, Sanchez has five. His latest, which he did on his own with two strikes, moved a pair of runners to second and third with one out, which led to an intentional walk to Hunter Pence and outs by Carlos Lee and Brett Wallace.

“I always feel comfortable bunting the ball in any count,” Sanchez said. “I’ve got to do my job. That’s what I want to do and that’s what my role is, to move guys into scoring position.”

Brad Mills, who likes the attitude that led to the decision, acknowledged he’s had discussions with Sanchez about the right times and the wrong times to bunt.

“There’s reasons that we want him to hit because he’s a good hitter,” Mills said. “Sanchie takes it upon himself to do whatever he can to help this ballclub win. We’ve had some conversations about things of that nature, but at the same time, that’s the type of individual that he is.”

Berkman, Holliday exit

Already dealing with a slew of injuries, the Cardinals lost a pair of key cogs to their offense in Lance Berkman and Matt Holliday. Holliday was removed after two innings with a tight left quadriceps and Berkman was removed as a precaution with tightness in his right wrist.

St. Louis finished with only backup catcher Gerald Laird on the bench.

Odds and ends

Brad Mills said Jason Bourgeois is still “a few days” from even being able to pick up a bat as he recovers from a pesky oblique strain. … Wilton Lopez was not used Wednesday, but Mills said he was feeling much better after coming to St. Louis with a fever as high as 104 degrees the previous day. …The Astros extended Albert Pujols’ homerless streak to a career-high 23 games. He went 22 games without a home run in 2007. …

In his 20th career start, hard-luck first-round pick Mike Foltynewicz notched his first career win. He took a no-hitter into the sixth for Class A Lexington, defeating last year’s No. 2 overall pick, Woodlands High graduate Jameson Taillon, and Pirates affiliate West Virginia.